Posted
by
Zonkon Friday March 04, 2005 @02:07PM
from the like-legislative-zombies dept.

sconeu writes "Apparently the EC is ignoring the restart directive, and has placed software patents as an A-Item on the Council of Minister's agenda with an aim for approval on Monday." From the article: "The directive is pitched as offering greater protection for software developers. Opponents, including many in the European parliament, fear it will simply provide big players, including America's powerful and litigious software giants, with a very large stick to batter upstart developers and the Open Source movement."Update: 03/04 22:04 GMT by Z: And just as quick as you please Denmark stops things in their tracks. Denmark's objection means that there will have to be further debate before the patents get the stamp.

Is it just me or does it sound like Microsoft and other litigious American software giants has bought the influence of this European commission? I can only hope that the many countries involved will stand up and fight to at least hold debate on a matter that might ruin most small and mid sized European software companies.

We've been standing up and fighting for months, but the way the EU is set up it's very hard to do anything about it.

In particular, the measure has been repeatedly voted against by the European Parliament, which is comprised of elected representatives from every region of every European country. It has been voted against by the Council of Ministers, which is comprised of important members of the Government of each member state. But with the bizzare way in which the EU works, the wishes of both the people and of the member governments can be overridden by unelected beaurocrats, some of whom were appointed years ago by politicians who are no longer in power.

While technically correct, it's misleading to say that the Council of Ministers have voted against it. It implies that they don't want the legislation pushed through, whereas in reality they do.

Decisions made by the Council must be unanimous. The Software Patents directive has been placed on the agenda as an A-list item (one that is passed without discussion unless a council member vetos it). Previously it has been prevented from passing by Poland, twice, and Denmark, once (I think).

The flowchart says "approves all the EP's ammendments" but (I believe that) the Parliament didn't make any modifications to the directive at the time of the first reading, because it predates any of our lobbying to make them aware of how bad the directive will be for the European software industry.

Just FYI, the parliament did make significant amendments to the directive, effectively keeping the status quo and keeping software patents invalid, back in September 2003, but in the process made some parts of the directive contradict itself.

However, the working party that reworked the directive for the Council removed the bulk of the parliament's amendments, while promising that they had put in additional protections against software patents, when in fact the protections were meaningless.

It was this theoretically neutered directive that the Council agreed to in May 2004 by a slim majority. Now that members have realised what they've done (agree a directive that allows patents), some are now trying to prevent this directive from being rubber-stamped as an A-list item, as you mentioned, despite the pressure of the Commission to force through the may 2004 version. I believe this is the 'common position' stage, step 9.

If it goes onto its second reading, the EP can still amend or block the directive, but it's a lot harder to do so, given the absolute majority required.

Here's hoping sufficient people in the Council can block the directive as an A-list item, and either force a restart or at least knock it back to a B-list item again for further discussion.

If the parliament had made no amendments to the original directive on it's first reading, we would then be at step 5, and this A-list item would indeed be the final stage.

Heres a (very detailed) link [ffii.org] to the differences between the the parliament's and council's versions.

This [softwarepatents.co.uk] is a better diagram of our current status. So all is not yet lost, even if the council does pass the may 2004 agreed version (their amended version of the parliament amended version), as it will have to go a second reading in the parliament, because of their changes. However, it's much harder for the parliament to introduce new amendments at the 2nd reading, making it basically a vote to kill the directive entirely, or pass the council version. Plus of course, it puts us one step closer to software patentability. Here [wikipedia.org] is a link detailing the process. Note the hefty requirements the parliament have to meet in order to modify or kill the bill at it's second reading - and even if *that* succeeds, the council still has to agree to those changes.

After the Council of the European Union has sent its common position to the European Parliament, a time period of 3 months starts to run. If the Parliament does nothing within this time frame, the common position enters into force as directive.

The Parliament can extend this time by one month if it decides so.

If the European Parliament does not agree, is has to adopt changes to the common position or reject the common position, the latter would end the codecision procedure at this point.

To change or reject the text in 2nd reading, the parliament needs an absolute majority of the 732 Members for a yes on an amendment - for each change.

Of course, if the council have a complete change of heart, and pass the parliament sept 2003 version, it goes into law - but we're ok, as that version blocks software patents. But that would require reopening discussion, which the Commission has so far put pressure on to block, both in the council, and as a total restart.

(I believe that) the Parliament didn't make any modifications to the directive at the time of the first reading

The Parliment did amend the directive. In fact Parliment did an excellent job. We WANT that version passed. The Council simply threw out essentially all of the of Parliments amendments. In fact they proceeded to re-amend it to be even more extreme and further from the Parliments position. They then had the gall to call it a "common position", to claim it was some sort of compromise and concilliation with Parliment. This is where we are now, they are attempting to officially sign off on this "common position" and pass it back to parliment.

I hate missleading names. It really shouldn't be titled a "common position" at all. The Council is certainly supposed to draft it in an effort to resolve differences with Parliment, but as this case shows there is no reason to expect it actually *is* any sort of common position.

That's what went through my head when I read the headline. If something like this just refuses to die, something else is behind it. You can really tell because this is happening so fast. If there was an issue that was not influenced by big money, and it was subject to debate between sides, we wouldn't hear it go back and forth so often. With this, the tide goes back and forth every other day. Politics don't move that fast unless there's a lot of money or power involved.

Since telling it nicely doesn't work, and telling it with lots of money is out of the question, we should find other ways to uhm...convince them. The first step is to peel them out of this anonymus term "European Commission", so they can't hide in it.

Blame McCreevy, the leading commissioner for the DG that's doing all this.

What is Ireland's stake in this? It used to be one of the poorest EU members, but the IT industry is booming over there. A particular type of IT, that is:

"U.S. investment in Ireland stands at $55.4 billion--more than four times the amount invested in China, according to James Kenny, a Chicago builder who became U.S. ambassador to Ireland last year.

American businesses have created more than 90,000 jobs in Ireland, but more telling, said Kenny, is the increasing value of those jobs. When Microsoft began manufacturing software in Ireland 20 years ago, the average salary at the plant was about $20,000; today that facility has grown into Microsoft's European Operations Center, with 1,100 employees and an average salary of about $65,000." (Chicago Tribune, numbers are stale)

The position of Poland is even more remarkable when you realize that Poland itself is also a potential cheap "European Operations Center" for non-European companies like Micro$oft. I think Poland either doesn't understand yet how modern democracy works, or they are pissed with the US because they feel they didn't get paid well for the services rendered to the US in the 'coalition' that attacked Iraq.

Is that why the title reads US influence peddling goes world-wide? If I were to say European ass-kissing goes world-wide, would it sound like I was blaming Europe, or just the politicians who accepted bribes?

> Patriotism has no substance and is always pure rhetoric and therefore invalid, move beyond it.

I know the word has probably been sullied beyond repair, but true patriots simply have a love for the values of a community that's quite large, and not only doesn't preclude harsh criticism of the nation when it does wrong, it requires it. Possibly it's misguided, assuming a nation can ever really be a community, but in some instances, it's warranted.

Well the main purpose of the US (government) has always been to help its corporations and to push them worldwide as far as possible, by force of arms if need be if that's what it takes to secure markets or raw materials.

So the thread title isn't that far off. Even though the US people don't think of corporations first when they see "US", the rest of the world pretty much does (that or the wrong end of an M16).

Its your representatives. If they are willing to get bought out by corporations that is your problem.

Yeah, a shame that these so called "representatives" aren't even elected, so they don't even answer to the citizens of the countries they "represent". Don't you find it odd that the elected portion of the EU repeatedly turned down software patents while these "representatives" are going full steam ahead?

the groupthink here won't allow me to expound on that, so I won't bother.

To counter groupthink, you'd have to first think, but most of the people who blindly defend software patents fail to do that.

What do you think will happen if this EU directive passes, and countries that previously did not accept software patents are forced to accept patents from those countries that do? You ARE aware that software patents are allowed in some countries, and that the EU is acting in its capacity to "smooth out" legal differences to facilitate trade right? Just wanted to make sure you're not spouting off bullshit about things you have no clue about. So what happens when your 5-year-old product meets the 2-year-old patent that suddenly materializes from another country where they didn't care about your software as prior art?

Before you bitch and whine about groupthink, note that this post has nothing to do with goodness or badness of patents, or abuse of the patent system or anything, it simply points out that the change in patent law will allow companies in countries with patents to wake up one day and crush everyone else.

I sent email via faxyourmp to my EU members of parliament, one UK independence party (hates the EU entirely, along with anything foreign), and the Liberal Democrats

I havent heard anything back from UKIP, which surprises me -I thought they'd be "the EU is evil, here is why".

The lib dem MP gave some patronising guff about technical innovation and "balancing the needs of large enterprises and small businesses", nothing about consumers, OSS developers, etc.

But he did say they had voted to send it back, and were miffed at the response. They werent letting it lie, as it was a sign of a broader power struggle between governments (council of ministers) and the EU parliament itself.

Uh, did you read the part where I said that if your "representatives" don't answer to the citizens that you have bigger problems than software patents? I know the EU is a fucked up idea. I am glad that some of the people in the EU are starting to realize this. Don't blame it on the US.

The EU is NOT a fucked up idea, the current organisation is. Of course, the US are not exactly pleased by the increasing power of the EU, but hey...

By the way, software patents are GOOD. They DO protect the small developer. As a small developer who has a couple of software patents that I have successfully licensed, I can PERSONALLY vouch for them. Of course, the slashbots don't want to hear this. The current issue with patents isn't the fact that there are software patents, but maybe the fact that there are cases where they have been granted without a good reason. Saying that "patents are bad" is just silly.

Bullshit. Even "normal" patents have bad side effects for the famous "little guy", and we're here talking about SOFTWARE patents, patents on ideas. That's the dumbest thing ever. I doubt that you're saying the truth with your "I can vouch for them" (ie, as an AC I think you're just pulling shit out of your ass), but even if that's the case, you should realize that your situation is the exception, not the norm, and by far. Software patents are used by big company to stiffle innovation. Ask bill gates, he wrote it black on white.

Nope. Time to stop blaming the US for everything that goes wrong in your world. You guys need to start taking reponsibility for your representatives' actions. I am sick and tired of Europeans blaming the US for every damn thing. Grow up.

Yup, and maybe you also have to have a bit broader view, and also grow up a bit. Thing is, while blaming US for everything as you say can not be sanely explained, bad market behaviour (yes, that can be quite subjective at times) seems to have a brooder in the US. The same

I suspect it's a matter of who has greater willpower, very much like the periodic brawls in the US between the White House and Congress. The Parliament can (and should) reject it, and keep rejecting it every time the EC kicks it back to them, but will they have the political will to do so? Cf. "Social Security" and "judicial appointments."

There is nothing wrong with patents per se, but rather the *reasons* why they are being called for.

The European computer patent measure seems to be aimed at stifling competition rather than encourage innovation - that is why it's not a good idea.

Unfortunate, the US patent system has the idea right but it's been misused into oblivion (with wonderful contributions from those granting patents, too) - but it was never created for the reasons that the European Computer Implemented Inventions Directive is being created for.

Give you a lead over others so that you are the only one who can legally use it for a while

Put the idea for all others to see and extend on

The idea is not to STOP others, but give you a lead over others since you invented it in the first place. Remember, that is not a bad idea in itself because if you are a 16 year old kid in a basement who comes up with your own idea, it can genuin

Blame the patent office for granting those patents, but not the idea behind patents in general.

If the idea behind patents is clumsy and vague enough that it can't be implemented without the patent office in question granting these disastrous "bad" patents, then wouldn't this essentially indicate some kind of flaw in the idea itself? Because frankly, every patent system in the world so far that allows software patents has granted these bad patents in great number.

It's kind of like, oh I don't know, communism. If Leninism is a good idea so long as you can get an incorrupt and wholly selfless state, but you can't ever get an incorrupt and wholly selfless state, maybe Leninism itself is just not such a good idea.

The patent concept is inherently inappropriate for computer programs. It cannot be implemented in a reasonable fashion, and attempts to implement it through bureaucracy are doomed to spectacular failure.

With physical inventions, patents do what you suggest: they protect the little guy. Big companies have the resources to mass-produce products, resources that the little guy simply doesn't have. So there's a very real risk of a big company copying your invention and outproducing you; patents are arguably necessary to prevent this.

Things are different with software. Firstly, you don't need vast resources to mass-produce software. A web site is about all you need; and reasonable servers and bandwidth are w

It would be impossible to do such a study, because there's no available control group.

Thomas Edison innovated, and he had lots of patents. Is that good enough for you? It shouldn't be, because you can't point to a truly analagous inventor who worked in a climate with no patents and compare the effects.

It would be impossible to do such a study, because there's no available control group.

I can recall in the 80's that Taiwan was producing Apple II clones that weren't legal in the US but proliferated in Southeast Asia. I wonder if the semiconductor industry in Taiwan is now more developed and influential than it was back then because of profits gained from ignoring intellectual property restrictions and manufacturing computer clones. Economies with overly restrictive patent laws may end up crippling them

Thomas Edison... you can't point to a truly analagous inventor who worked in a climate with no patents and compare the effects.

How about every single person responsible for the creation and development of computer science?

How about Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, Grace Hopper, John McCarthy, Edsger W. Dijkstra, everyone at Bell Labs from Claude Shannon to Ken Richie, everyone at Xerox PARC during their important period, and (for at least most of his career) Donald Knuth?

I had the best idea ever: instead of saying patents, we'll use the word algorithms. Now, we just have to prevent everyone from selling algorithmic and computer sciences books because they are evil and can trick us into writing programs and libraries based on existing patents.

Unfortunate, the US patent system has the idea right but it's been misused into oblivion

This is the good old "guns don't kill people, people do". It's neither here nor there -- the system is being systemically abused, so much so that the original idea(l)s don't really matter a lot. I'm also not quite sure where you got the idea that EU system was designed to stifle innovation -- I seriously doubt that was the expressed intent. Rather, there was lots of talk about harmonization, and levelling the playin gfield. not that I care much about the official reasonings, but since you imply they differ between US and European systems (which I don't think is the case).

What you are basically saying that EU patent system extension would be just ok, if the
rhetorics being used were more noble.
I think talk is cheap, and the end result would be the same no matter how eloquently the background ideals were expressed.

Further, I think that there is plenty wrong with patents, as far as they extend to software and business methods. For one they are useless (copyrights are enough); and for another they are dangerous (abuse by companies specializing in enforcing patents instead of building anything based on designs being patented).

I can accept time-limited patents for mechanical inventions, and (grudgingly) for chemical compounds (or, preferably, only for methods for creating specific compounds); but that's because they already exist, and there are some reasonably arguments for them. For software, I'd much rather not have any patentability whatsoever. And I'm confident that this would be to my best interest, even as the "small guy", coming up with innovative software algorithms and designs. I don't need abuse-ridden system to ostensibly "protect" me.

> That's an idea behind achieving an expression, and he rightfully holds the> patent to it.

Any engineer who was faced with the problem would have solved it, just because somebody was the first to solve a problem in a particular way shouldn't prevent someone else from solving the problem and arriving at the same answer.

> I think you're confusing patents and copyrights.

No I'm not, copyright is suitable for protecting literature, music, films and software. Patents are suitable for protecting physic

Any engineer who was faced with the problem would have solved it, just because somebody was the first to solve a problem in a particular way shouldn't prevent someone else from solving the problem and arriving at the same answer.

No, many engineers have been confronted with the same problems and not solved it. It takes skill to solve the problem, and hence the patent.

Which is why patents have to be extremely specific about what they do. And if they were the first to come up with something they did, why is

So you're a lone programmer and you have one good idea. You patent it, and then write a program that uses it. Fine.

But when you try to sell that program, along comes a big business that says "we want to buy your one idea for a small sum of money - oh, and by the way your program contravenes 73 of our patents on trivial obvious programming ideas. So either you take our offer, or else we sue you into oblivion".

If you are a lone programmer (or a small independent group) who comes up with something that you need to make money out of, patents genuinely help you.

No, they may help you if you're the first person to think of the idea, and have enough capital to register the patent and load a magazine of patent lawsuits into a lawyer.

If you're not the first person to think of the idea, then you're fucked. It doesn't matter that you thought of the idea yourself, that you got no help from anyone, that you didn't know the idea had been invented and that it had been patented, you're lawsuit bait, and you're going to have to either stop selling whatever it was you were selling, change it radically at much expense to you (which might not be enough), or pay someone else for the privilege of using the work you did.

Patents suck. Patents exist only to create incentive to invent new things, but they come with a price in that they punish those who invent things that have already been invented - which means if something is an obvious solution to a problem, one group can hurt many innocent inventors. In software, there already are incentives to create new things, so there's no need for patents. None whatsoever. You ONLY get the bad side. We need software patents outlawed. We need those who approve of them out of power. Out of power in the US. Out of power in the EU. We need those who lobby for them excerting undue influence on politicians to get them passed jailed. And we need those who register software patents and try to enforce them pilloried and bankrupted as the fucked up opportunists they are.

Why do Europeans allow a non-elected commission to determine economic policy? It makes no sense to me that a state would agree to hand out such important matters that, in my mind anyhow, require representation to do. Personally, I don't give crap about software patents, I'm more amazed the EU is run like this.

The Euuropean union is a young and a very fastmoving project. I believe very few europeans know what the parlament actully do and what the commission do. I'm a swede and very seldom we get to vote, there is close to zero follow-up on the people we vote on in the media and frankly we don't know what they do. I don't think democracy is one of the strengths of the EU right now. Maybe in the future.

May I remind you that the governments of most countries are also non-elected? Usually they are appointed by the prime minister, who is also non-elected, but appointed by the governing faction/coalition of the parliament.

For the first time ever, Microsoft has real competition and two of the main players are based in Europe, e.g. SuSE and Mandrake. I fully expected Microsoft et al to pressure the EU but didn't expect Europe to basically decapitate the very industry that could have made it a real force to be reckoned with.

A couple of years ago, there was an EU purge on corruption within the commission itself and a minister was appointed to ensure that it did not recur. Sadly, either the bastards asl

Coming from Sweden with a monarchy, I can just add that our monarchs are simply PR devices. They know that too, and don't try to be something else either. If they do (it has happened they've let some political opinion slip) they usually catch a lot of flak for it. They have nothing to say about how our contry is run as well (that's indeed left to our government), and when they open their mouths it's often in times of disasters like the recent Thailand tsunami, to "comfort" us.

The only problem I have with them is basically that they cost money. I'm sure we could switch to becoming a republic and save a bit of money that way, and not have monarchs represent our country on e.g. visiting Africa to show our stance about poor children, smashing a bottle to introduce a ship, eating some food at a Nobel dinner or whatever. Seems a bit like a waste to me.

One could argue that they enable the tabloid press to thrive, thus putting a little money back into the economy. Besides dumbing down de peons has to be a good thing in a globalized environment. Dumb people buy what they're told to.

Sure, software patents protect small developers. That's why Carmack's Reverse is patented by 3DLabs (who John Carmack doesn't work for, and received royalties from Doom 3 sales), one-click ordering is patented by one of the online auction giants, and is why we're seeing elements of standard computing operations being patented on a weekly basis.

How does the patenting of the components and standard processes of computing protect the small developers if the small developers are no longer allowed to freely develop?

I'm not up on my EU procedures. Assuming it is approved by the ministers, does it still need Parliamentary approval? If so, and assuming it receives such, is there some type of court to which an appeal can be brought? Does the EU have any type of Judicial redress?

Well, if it would be approved, it still would have to return to the EU parliament, due to their request to restart / renegotiate.
However, since they require a absolute majority to implement changes to it would be much harder to stop it.
Should it manage to get through, the best bet would be for the parliament to reject it in full, however, this would also require an absolute majority.

According to this article [heise.de] in the German IT magazine Heise.de (use the fish [altavista.com]), the danish parliament has giving their minister for economy, Bendt Bendtsen, binding orders to request a complete restart of the whole negotiations.
The parliament of the Netherlands have giving their representative orders to support any demands for new negotiations.
Finally, the German representative would face sever pressure (he'd probably have to resign) should he ignore the German parliants demands for new negotiations.
As for many of the "new" EU members, they will probably not support a decision that might severly restrict their fledgeling IT economy - no matter how much Microsoft and the other "big players" try to lobby.
So, all in all, its as good as dead - at least for now.

According to the danish constitution the danish parliament cannot give the danish government binding orders on matters like this. But a majority of the danish parliament is behind the request, and the same majority could sack Minister Bendt Bendtsen if he doesn't do as he was requested.

Today, the danish comission of European affairs ORDERED their governement to not treat the new software patent directive as a "done deal".The Dutch governement had earlier said it was hoping on a redraft opf the bill, but would not block the vote, something the German Governement had also done.In the meantime the Dutch VVD also brought in a motion to try to get an amendment to bring "community patents into the bill, which then would have to be completely redrafted.

Source: www.webwereld.nl

I dont know about you folks, but I'm thinking: "It ain't over 'till the Fat Lady sings"And I somewhat like the idea of a commons of patents.

Actually, the Dutch have ordered their representative to support any country that wishes to restart the whole negotiations.
Since the Danes already stepped forward for that one, and the Dutch support it, they have to vote on it.
And I guess it won't get a majority with the new EU members now present (they know it would kill of their feldgeling IT economy)

It gets voted down. So the powers that be hold another vote. Repeat until the TPTB gets what it wants. No rule in place to keep you from asking over and over, like a nagging kid wanting candy.

Same thing in my home town over a property tax for schools. Put it up for a vote, and it's a no. Do it again. And again. And finally it goes through. And the school board starts doing backflips. Whee! A mandate from the masses!

Any truly fair system would hold a single vote, on a single topic - and then no more. Not forever, but for say...at least 7 years or so.

If the EU Parliament can make a stink about this autocratic move by the EU Council, and stop the power grab, it will be a larger victory for European democracy. This kind of abuse will happen all the time in Europe, making a sham of democracy as corporations and other interests make end runs around a subordinate democratic government. But if they can drive a stake through its heart now, democracy can rule a functionary state body instead. Europe has had centuries of warmup for a continental democracy experiment, including staging a mixed bag of results across the Atlantic. Now, as it is formally getting underway at home, is the time to ensure the balances are correct.

Yeah, and the US Congress can impeach the president, convict and force him to resign. That has never happened, even with Nixon after Vietnam and Watergate. It's really like bringing a nuke to a gunfight - everyone loses. Like when the Republicans impeached Clinton over a blowjob, just to interfere with his control of the country, and the economy started folding. It's more useful to have incremental checks and balances that ensure confrontations are the last resort, rather than the only resort, in any human

As heise reports [heise.de], the Danish parliament has bindingly instructed their secretary of commerce to vote AGAINST software patents,
so the law can't be nodded through.
According to their parliaments some other ministers are instructed (more or less bindingly) to support
another country's approach to restart the whole process:
Poland, Netherlands, Spain (had already voted against it in the last session), maybe Germany (but represented by some stubbor a..hat, so..)
Also it is likely that some countries that were neutral during the last voting (like Austria, Belgium, Italy) will support a complete restart.

Don't forget the new EU members, they will want a restart.
As for Germany - if our representative screws around again (the parliament has voted that Germany shouldn't support this directive) he'll probably have to step down.
He already has taken some severe beatings since the German economy aint doing that good, but should he choose to go against the decision of the parliament it will be a feast for the Opposition.

I live in Switzerland, which is not part of the EU, thank God, and given the EC blatant disregard for the EU parlimentary request to restart the process of software patents, I will make very sure, by the democratic means of public initiative, aka privately initiated referendums, which we have in Switzerland, that Switzerland will never join that bastion of corruption.

I do not want my country ruled by a cabal of easily bought unelected scum in Brussels, and, given the way things are going, I think there are many current EU members, such as the UK and Denmark that are wondering how they can get out of it as fast as possible.

"I do not want my country ruled by a cabal of easily bought unelected scum in Brussels, and, given the way things are going, I think there are many current EU members, such as the UK and Denmark that are wondering how they can get out of it as fast as possible."

Heh, now you know how we feel about our "Representatives" in Washington D.C.:-)

IMHO, this is the effect the general political disinterest the population has here in the EU. It may be stronger than in the US, but it' still declining.

And it is now SO LOW that corruption rises steeply. This is corruption, isn't it? Not calling it corruption would euphemise it.

Maybe, people still care a bit about what the media say. The media don't say anything about 'smaller political issues', only the important ones.

But the media also decide what "important issues" are. For example they redefine that corruption is about privately using frequent-flyer-miles (not ok, of course, but corruption?), about contacts of politicians into red-light districts (wtf?!)They let politicians talk about "high-tech", "information economy" etc.pp. But if important laws are proposed in this area, they do not notice or they do not want to notice.

If the Minister for Economic Affairs overrides decisions of the cartel office for apparently no good reason (as it happened here in germany), it's pictured as "saving the economy". Arrrrrrgh!

If they push this through, "we" should not stop trying to prevent software patents. We should lobby for the abolition of software patents then. But this will be hard.

Sometimes, I have the vision for 2020-2030 of some grey-haired FLOSS developers drinking tea together and being nostalgic about the wild times where software development wasn't illegal and fundamental rights were still respected.

" IMHO, this is the effect the general political disinterest the population has here in the EU."

Try to see it from their view:

They think that TRIPs requires that software be patentable, that software is *currently* patentable due to the requirement in TRIPS and that the Parliament don't understand the current situation. They also think they are protecting European software companies from Asian competition.

So the politicians in the Commission think they are doing the best for Europe. They think they're th

The French revolution. Those in power repeatedly ignore the cries of the people and defile common sense with their governmental decisions. The rich live their lives in naive luxury while those outside their homes are starving. Finally the straw that breaks the camel's back will fall, and the people will rise to usurp their so-called "leaders". Chaos will soon follow, and the rage, blood, and death will spread across the countryside like wild-fire...

Anything and everything just seems to be getting more and more messed up in the world of politics today. My only question is what will be the 21st century equivalent of the guillotine? Laser guns? Oh please, please let it be laser guns!!! =D

What I mean by that is that if someone defines, say, a new crime and brings out laws against that crime, from that point on you can try people for breaking those laws. But you can't retrospectively try people who committed that crime before the laws against it were written.

Sure, patent law has existed for years but software patent laws are not currently recognised in Europe. If they do get through, by the same logic, no software written before those laws were enforced can come under them - is that the case or am I missing something?

Their reasoning is that software patents are already legal and valid. Yeah yeah, the European Patent Convention has this pesky little line explicitly stating that software is not patentable, but that's OK... that line is completely meaningless and was intended to be completely meaningless when they wrote it. You see there's this wonderful little phrase "as such" latter in the text. The intended purpose of "as such" is to punch a hole in patent law so big you can drive a planet through it. The purpose of say

Residents are advised to stock up on shotguns and ammo, and to aim for the head. Scientists are still undecided on whether the outbreak is caused by an engineered virus, a near-earth asteroid fly-by, or bureaucratic incompetence.

Dr. Berger describes the letter of the president of the Commission (José Manuel Barroso) to the president of the EP (Josep Borrell), in which a restart of the process is declined, as "yet another provocation of the parliament". She concludes that Barroso "apparently loves to play high-stakes poker with the EP", and recalls that he already suffered his first defeat with that approach last year when he had to withdraw his list of proposed commissioners because the EP would otherwise have withheld its approval. The way she sees the present situation, Barroso may now face another defeat. Dr. Berger concludes saying that Bill Gates, who recently traveled Europe to pressure politicians toward a directive to his liking, "is at the moment making himself ever more enemies in the EP".

Another interesting tidbit from the article:

Microsoft's push for EU software patents drew major attention last month after a leading Danish financial newspaper quoted Microsoft Denmark's chief lobbyist who said that Bill Gates had threatened the Danish government with killing 800 jobs unless the EU were to legalize software patents. The Danish social democrats responded with a press release that "blackmail shall not dictate Danish policy". Microsoft subsequently denied that Gates made the respective statement but did admit that intellectual property rights and their connection with the location of jobs were discussed in the respective meeting.

I find it interesting that there is an ongoing suggestion that only big money firms are innovators and that small companies and open source concerns are just copiers. Such willful ignorance is staggering.

You have any doubt? Let us look at Microsoft then as they are the biggest and surely the "most innovative." Which world famous products of theirs have shown them to be the great innovators that all else copy?

MS-DOS? A clone of existing operating systems. They took someone else's idea, made their own implementation, and profited.

Their greatest triumph? Windows OS. So can we assume Microsoft created the first graphical operating system? The first window based operating system? The first point-and-click, mouse navigated operating system? No, no and no. In all three cases they took an existing idea from someone else, extended it and profited.

Which is exactly what small companies and open source projects do. But we're getting ahead of ourselves...

Tell me then, what is the second item Microsoft is famous for? MS Office. So then, did Microsoft invent the word processor? Spreadsheet? Email client? Database? Not one thing that Microsoft is famous for is a software idea of their own invention. In every case they have extended a previous software idea. And have gotten rich doing it.

This is how software has ALWAYS been created... until now.

Software patents are simply a tool for the mighty to beat the young in manners they themselves were NEVER subjected to. If the EU passes this proposal they should be consistent and pass a proposal to allow adults to choke and stifle children, to choke them until they die. Sure, we understand that we became adults because someone else was leanient toward us. Just as the process of creating software was leanient toward today's giants. Should that debt cause us to extend the same courtesy toward those that come after us?

Pass software patents? Let us be consistent then: punish the weak, the poor, the young, the lessers - all they who fall outside the scope of the "master race." Good Nazi's vote in favour of patents.

I'm wondering how long until there's a civil war in the EU from people who get sick of their new federalism.

Your civil war was a long time ago and you may think wars are a romantic way to solve conflicts. Here in Europe people remember the last two wars we fought, and we don't labor under such notions. We won't go to war over a perceived democratic deficit (which is funny, coming from a nation with only two parties, which are identical anyway), and we certainly will not go to war over software patents.

That's a little extreme. Corporations are not obligated to commit ethical violations just because it might net them more money. Most shareholders would probably not put up with unethical behaviour just for increased value of the stock.

The people pushing patents believe in their black, black hearts that this is ethical. That Intellectual Property is just that. I've been in a patent discussion with our lawyers and it's amazing that they actually believe the IP argument. They just don't understand how softwar

Don't dress up greed as a moral obligation. It's not in theory or in practice. Corporate officers have very little to fear from not meeting their clear and well defined obligations (Andrew Fastow is serving how much time for losing how many thousands of people their retirement?), much less the fiduciary responsibility requirements.

The requirements of fiduciary responsibility are usually negative, not positive. You can't do something that's clearly BAD for the company (remember the flap about the network

I've always thought it would be interesting if people or organizations within the open source movement would start patenting everything they invented, then license it under a gpl like clause but with some kind of protection measures against patent lawsuits. I seriously doubt anyone owns more valuable intellectual property than the FSF, they'd be the 800 lb gorilla. Of course, who can afford $2,000 per patent?